Is it a human life? I am amazed when, every time I discuss embryonic stem cells and cloning with people, they always start their response, “Well, I’m pro-choice, but cloning humans in order to harvest stem cells… I don’t know.” There is a direct and instinctual link between abortion and cloning. Gregory Pence, a pro-cloning bioethicist, could not be more correct when he writes, “To say that embryos are not persons and can be killed in private but cannot be studied and killed in research is contradictory. Perhaps this shows once again that the cloning debate is really about abortion.”1 On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Roe v. Wade, that the laws outlawing abortion in Texas were unconstitutional because a woman had a right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitution. Suddenly, the unborn had no legal protection in the United...

The top of the slippery slope: artificial insemination Many believe that advances in cloning and stem cell research, as well as their ethical implications, are recent developments. Actually we have been careening down a slippery slope toward a biotechnical “brave new world” for quite some time. This will be an unpopular topic for many American Catholics, but to ignore the path that has led to our current dilemmas would be to side-step issues that threaten our well-being. The Catholic Church is very clear about the nature of conjugal love: the procreative and unitive aspects of sexual intercourse are two halves of the same act. Each child is meant to be conceived out of love for love. To “create” a child outside conjugal love is immoral. A child from the sexual union of a man and a woman is begotten, not made, a gift from God. Children...